Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 83.djvu/61

Rh increasing infirmities, chief of which were "chronic consumption and asthma." All this "painfully impeded his schemes of work and occasionally induced states of mind altogether at variance with its otherwise robust character." He was twenty years in writing his famous "Essay on the Human Understanding" and it was done "by incoherent parcels and after long intervals of neglect." No man was ever more impressed with the value of health and vigor and his "Thoughts on Education" begin with the bitter words, "Our clay cottage is not to be neglected "—for "he whose body is crazy and feeble will never be able to advance in it."

Immanuel Kant is a shining example of what can be done in economizing the bodily forces, and of how much may be accomplished in the way of mental work by a frail body which is kept in a fair state of health. "Possibly a more meager, arid, parched anatomy of a man has not appeared upon this earth." "His organization was so delicate that he was extremely sensitive to impressions from external objects, and Jachmann relates that a newspaper fresh from the press and still damp would give him a cold." "His digestive organs were early deranged and gave him perpetual trouble." Yet he said of himself that he was healthy, "that is in my usual weak way." If we can trust DeQuincy, "Kant's health was even exquisite." That "weak way" interfered with his work and he exclaimed: "Think of it, friends! Sixty years old, constantly disturbed by indisposition in plans only half completed." "He spoke of himself often under the figure of a gymnastic artist, who had continued for nearly fourscore years to support himself upon the slack rope of life-without once swerving to the right or to the left." We owe to Kant's clock-work regularity and temperance of living the product which his fine brain produced, and his vast influence upon the world.

Herbert Spencer is another example of a philosopher who is put down as an invalid, and invalid he was for the greater part of his life after thirty-five. At thirteen he became homesick at school and started one morning at six for home; walked forty-eight miles the first day, forty-seven the second and twenty miles the third day, and in the whole time had very little to eat. It would seem that only a child of very remarkable vitality could have carried out such a program and survived. As he himself says, "It can scarcely be doubted that my system received a detrimental shock. . . although there was no manifest sign of mischief." As a boy he excelled in running and was a good skater.

At sixteen he speaks of himself as "strong, in good health, and of good stature," but easily excited and kept awake.

At twenty-one as a draughtsman he worked from eight in the morning to twelve at night and one day a week to three Keeping these hours, either with his routine or literary work, he found